photo credit: AT&T’s LG Thrive Pre-Paid Droid

AT&T is the last of the cell phone service providers to offer a Droid Smartphone in their pre-paid lineup. Beginning April 17th, AT&T is offering the LG Thrive for $180. The Thrive is a mid-range Droid, running on the Android OS 2.2 (Froyo). It only has a 3.2 megapixel camera and 160 MB of memory, although it can be expanded to 32 GB with a MicroSD card. The customers will have to pay pretty dearly for using this phone however. Customers can choose the “Smartphone 10 cents per minute” plan or “Smartphone $2 USD per day for unlimited talk and text” plan. Their choices for data plans range from $5 for 10 MB to $25 for 500 MB. There is no contract, which is probably a good thing since customers may dump AT&T once they find out how poor the service coverage areas are.

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photo credit: Cell Tower Fits in Your Hand

Mobile data usage grows almost exponentially. With more and more Smartphone usage, Wi-Fi hotspots and mobile technology in general, how to handle growing mobile data usage is the focus of wireless companies. Wireless companies are spending billions each year to maximize capacity. As their research and development costs grow, so do our cell phones bills. Costly cell phone towers being built at alarming numbers not only push our wireless bills up, but are unsightly as well. A tiny little device the size of a Rubik’s cube is being developed by Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) that may be the answer to both cost and more cell phone towers.

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photo credit: Motorola Xoom - Now or Later?

The Motorola Xoom became available February 24th. With its 10.1 inch screen and 1280 by 800 resolution display, it is perfect for displaying pictures and presentations. The Xoom’s Honeycomb OS runs Nvidia’s Tegra 2 platform, with a dual-core 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and 32GB of on-board user memory (plus an SD card slot). What’s not to love? Why not rush out and buy it now?

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photo credit: It’s a Mobile World

There were 81 million Smartphones sold world-wide in the third quarter of 2010 alone. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, “Smartphones accounted for nearly one in five mobile phones sold that quarter. The chiefs of Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. think Smartphones could account for nearly three of every four phones sold by the middle of the decade. Between the emergence of the iPad, apps, Android Smartphones and the introduction of 4G networks, 2010 was the year the computer truly went mobile.” Welcome to 2011 and the mobile world. Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Southern California Storms Take Out Phone Service

100,000 customers throughout California lost land line phone service during severe storms. The state declared emergencies in numerous California counties, including Riverside and San Bernardino. During the storms between December 17 to January 4, storms soaked through to underground cables, disrupting service. AT&T had 70,000 complaints at the peak of the storm; Verizon had 32,000. Normally these outages are fixed within 24 hours, according to the PUC’s service quality standards. During this two and a half week storm period, AT&T and Verizon were unable to fix 90% of outages within that 24 hour window. Some customers were without phone service for as much as twelve days. Many of those people did not have cell phones. Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Pay-by-Smartphone

Rumor has it that Apple is planning to introduce pay-by-phone on the next generation of iPhones and iPads. The new technology would allow you to use your iPhone or iPad to pay for products or services just like using your credit card. This could effectively reduce the number of plastic credit cards you need to carry in your wallet. Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Winter Tips for Smartphone Users

Just how bad is the winter cold for your Smartphone? First of all, lithium ion batteries don’t like extreme temperatures, either hot or cold. Verizon Wireless recommends you keep your battery fully charged in case of emergency. Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: iPad 2 Rumors

iPad 2 rumors are flooding the Internet. Every day you hear more rumors, everything from a new model, a new launch date or including a USB port. How do you sort out the truth from the fiction? Ben Parr, Mashable, attempted to discern the truth about the top 10 rumors. According to Ben Parr, some rumors he would bet money on, and others he predicts will only happen when pigs fly. Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: MetroPCS Android Cell Phone

Partnering with Boingo, the nation’s leading source of public Wi-Fi, MetroPCS phones running Android can now tap into hotspots for free. The LG Optimus M and Huawei Ascend, two of MetroPCS’s Android phones, will now come pre-loaded with special software from a company called Devicescape. The app recognizes 500,000 hotspots that are controlled by Boingo, which would cost other users a monthly or weekly connection fee. For the other 200,000 hotspots that actually cost money, the user would have to pay $7.95 a month fee. Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: Cell Phone Bill

Have you been shocked by your cell phone bill lately? One in five people got an unexpectedly high bill in the past year, according to Consumer Report’s just released cell phone survey. Were you texting more than your plan allowed? If you recently upgraded to a Smartphone, you may have gone over your data usage allowance. How can you avoid cell phone bill shock? Read the rest of this entry »